1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of retail marketing promotions, and in particular, to a comprehensive coupon validation network for efficiently monitoring and controlling all phases of coupon processing.
2. Prior Art
Coupons, for example cents-off, two-for-one and the like, have become an integral part of retail marketing, particularly for food and pharmaceutical products. Most coupons are issued by the manufacturers of the products, although retail stores, particularly retail store chains, will often issue coupons as well. Presently, printed coupons are collected by consumers, often in quantities of hundreds or even thousands of small pieces of paper. Most consumers are unable to say, with any assurance, just what products may be purchased at a discount by reason of the coupons on hand. As a consequence, most consumers usually find that several coupons have been left at home, some time during shopping or checking out.
The coupons are presented for redemption at the cash register when checking-out a group of purchases. Even in those instances where electronic scanners and electronic sales registers are available, a cashier must manually examine each coupon individually. The examination must include checking the expiration date of the coupon, whether or not the consumer has actually purchased the product identified on the coupon and, frequently, whether the consumer has purchased the correct quantity of products and the correct size of the product. Thereafter, the values of the manually validated coupons must be entered into the register for subtraction from the unadjusted aggregate purchase price.
Those coupons which are collected by the retailers must be manually sorted, and returned to the manufacturers. The sorting is usually done by a professional clearing house, but is sometimes done by the retailer or retail chain. In either case, the coupons must be sorted both by manufacturer and by retailer, in order for each retailer to receive proper reimbursement from each manufacturer. The manufacturers must pay fees to the clearing houses and must pay handling fees to the retailers, which increases the cost of the product promotions. The retailers incur an additional cost by reason of extending credit to the manufacturers by underwriting the discount values of the coupons at the time of purchase and being reimbursed at a later time.
The current system is not only too expensive, it is something of an administrative nightmare to collect, sort, shuffle and transport millions and millions of small pieces of paper. Moreover, the system is fraught with opportunities to defraud the manufacturers by presenting coupons for reimbursement which have not been presented in conjunction with purchasing a product. Once a coupon has reached a sorting stage it is impossible for a manufacturer to determine whether a specific product was purchased with that coupon. Such frauds are usually undetectable unless perpetrated by large conspiracies with many participants.
The supermarket industry, in particular, has already begun adding universal product codes (UPC) to coupons. The coupons are encoded to enable machine scanning of the coupons at the point of purchase, that is, by the cashier. As the coupon is scanned, it may be checked against a database file to ensure that it is a valid coupon, for which the consumer should receive a credit. Although coupon scanning technology is available, the coupons must still be manually checked against the products purchased. Moreover, most retailers do not have the necessary computer capacity to store a file of all redeemable coupons, and most retailers do not want the burden of operating a data processing center, which would be necessary to maintain current coupon files.
This invention overcomes all of the problems plaguing the prior art, as identified above. This invention provides a comprehensive coupon validation network which eases the burdens of the manufacturers, the retailers and the consumers. Firstly, the invention provides an electronic system to replace the manual system. Once coupons have been presented to a retailer, and validated, the coupons may be discarded. The coupons may be automatically invalidated to prevent subsequent revalidation and/or destroyed. Secondly, payments to the retailers from the manufacturers are made more promptly because validation is completed at the point and the time of sale. Thirdly, fraudulent redemption is eliminated because validation requires simultaneous satisfaction of the validation criteria, namely a properly redeemable coupon and a corresponding purchased product of the correct size and quantity, the validation being conducted automatically without manual intervention. Fourthly, retailers are provided with a means for maintaining an up-to-date file of redeemable coupons without having to establish or maintain a data processing center. Fifthly, operating costs of the store can be further reduced because consumers may process coupons for redemption and validation in advance, completely independently and apart from point and time of sale transactions. Finally, consumers may establish a coupon credit account which makes it unnecessary to maintain large numbers of coupons. The coupon credit account can be tapped fully and automatically at the time of each point of sale transaction to ensure that all coupons available will be utilized, ending the aggravation of forgotten coupons.